Spectrum Gaming – Rainbow Six: Patriots

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Team Rainbow’s been quiet awhile. It was 2008 when Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 was released, and while Ubi hinted last month that new games would appear in running franchises, it’s not until now that iwe knew it was this one. We were expecting Spinter Cell. But it’s Rainbow Six: Patriots.

It’s coming from Ubisoft’s Montreal department, and being made alongside Ubisoft Toronto and Ubisoft Red Storm. Which I hope is their solution to multiformat, rather than a return to the fragmented design days of the last decade, that saw their titles get a little confused. Although despite three teams on the project, they’re in no rush – the game is set for 2013. And of course it’s not really being made by them, but by Tom Clancy himself. And promises “a bold new direction”.

Which is a good sign, compared to the Ubi of old (well, four years ago) when they were attempting to factory-produce their popular franchises, with alternating teams working on alternating games, in an attempt to have one of everything a year (especially Splinter Cell and Prince Of Persia). The results were not so good, and they seem to have learned from this, given the comparatively long production time here.

So what’s the bold new direction? Ubi’s creative director David Sears explains that,

“Terrorism has evolved, and so has Rainbow 6. In Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Patriots, all the team play, tactics, and realism that fans of the series love have been coupled with an exciting new narrative direction. This adds an unprecedented level of humanity that will make Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Patriots an extremely tense and immersive experience.”

Which is to say, er, nothing.

The scant information available at this point continues on saying Team Rainbow is facing a new threat called the True Patriots, who are a naughty revolutionary group claiming that “the American government is irrevocably corrupted by greedy politicians and corporate special interests.” Er. So it’s internal terrorism this time out, in what sounds a bit like Team Rainbow Vs. the Tea Party.

They also promise lots of new co-op and multiplayer, focusing on teamwork as you might expect from this five-year forgotten series. Apparently there will be more info in something called “Official Xbox Magazine” later this month. Magazines, eh? They still exist?

The only evolution I’ve seen in terrorism (admittedly from my comfy armchair-slash-ivory tower) over the last decade has been the use of terrorism laws to snoop on / lock up / restrict placard waving veggies, soap dodgers, and OAPs trying to get into party conferences.

If we change our way of life the terrorists will have won.

Something to remember next time you’re virtually and literally strip searched at the airport because some bloke failed to set his underpants on fire.

I did enjoy the later games, especially when I got the first Xbox one with the fancy headset and the voice commands that I used for about a day before I felt silly. However, the original games were far more fun due to the planning stage, and if everything goes right, I didn’t even have to take part in the actual mission, just watch the squad go to work and all I had to manage waS the go/breach commands and timing. It was fun if it went a bit squiffy and only then would I jump in and try to save the day. Very tense. I think that I was more attached to the squad members in those games than when I was restricted to controlling Chavez.

Move to cover, pop out, shoot. Order your AI buddies to take a door. Lather, rinse, repeat. Don’t get me wrong, R6: Vegas was plenty fun, but boy did it get tedious by the end. Hell yes to a new strategy-based FPS.

Yeah really that is rather worrying. Saying “the American government is irrevocably corrupted by greedy politicians and corporate special interests.” makes you a terrorist now? Sounds like there’ll be a level where you get to fire tear gas at Iraq war veterans.

Page hits, if they didn’t cover it someone else would yadda yadda yadda… speaking for no one other than myself, I feel RPS should go black on this one because the subject matter is just so fucking purile.

The US military provides “free” assistance, funding and advertising to most games and movies featuring US military forces and hardware, provided they get to make their own changes to the script. So virtually anything mainstream that features a bunch of military stuff is going to be propaganda It has Tom Clancy’s name on it, I don’t know how much if any input he has on the series anymore, but it fits with his views as a Reagan worshiping war nut.

I think everyone is missing the point. It’s FICTION ffs! Not real. Fantasy. Make believe.

Also, I’d assume the “bad guys” aren’t being labelled terrorists because they dissent… I’m going to assume that they’re labelled terrorist due to terrorist activities, which will probably be revealed in the opening intro, or will form the basis of the tutorial/first mission.

Seriously, there is enough knee-jerk ignorance on Yahoo! and other commenting cesspools that I don’t need to see it here. It’s a one-line description about a plot that you have no other details from. Perhaps you want to wait until you have a damn clue before you start your ignorant rant?

Piracy has evolved, and so has Rainbow 6. In Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Patriots, all the team play, tactics, and realism that fans of the series love have been coupled with an exciting new DRM. This adds an unprecedented level of frustration that will make Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Patriots an extremely tense and irritating experience.

I did DrSlek, but I disagree with the CoD influence. Alright, yeah, Vegas and Vegas 2 are more simplistic compared to, say, Ghost Recon and the original R6 games, but I would hardly lump them with CoD. Vegas still has a lot of strategical thinking behind it.

I’m usually the kind of guy to complain IN A VERY LOUD MANNER about how changing your licence orientation sucks and all (read ghost recon for exemple)

But I must admit I enjoyed both R6 vegas.

Sure I’ve been playing quite a lot of rogue spear, raven shield, or even the very first one, so I can say I miss them a lot, especially recalling those nice coop I had with virutal friend, 3 FLASH 2 BREACH 1 SHOOT 0 ALL DOWN §1!

But vegas was quite fun to play, it doesn’t really deserves much of the R6 name, but I ‘ve had some good time.

I didn’t like them, but I have no problem with anyone having fun. I have no problem if the new game is a really great one. I still think it’s fine TO COMPLAIN LOUDLY :D
Because the new game will not be a true™ Rainbow Six game (I guess that’s safe to say) and they just stop making them. Instead of letting the series die there are new games and with each one the old fans are given the finger again.
Why not start a new brand or if it has to be R6 a second series? Even Need for Speed can do that now. Call them Rainbow Six Action or somethin. Then a proper sequel all 5 years or so would be fine for the old fans and you can have your fancy me-too-cover-shooter yearly for all I care.

Tom Clancy is bonkers.
His earlier war books were very obviously Solium Inferno style board game narratives.
Then he just went completely insane.
Have you read Tigers Tail? If it wasn’t an ebook I would have burnt it.

Saying that. PLEASE can we have a Rogue Spear or Thunder Island style retread?!

So in reaction to the boom of the modern FPS genre, where titles such as Modern Warfare, BF3 and Medal of Honour have all focused on a heavy narrative that revolve around dealing with splinter groups and terrorist threats, Ubisoft have decided to distance themselves from this by making a new Rainbow Six title focused on a heavy narrative that revolves around terrorist threats!

I just don’t get it, they had a really good niche with the mission planning/heavy realism approach of the earlier games and they’re just intent on jumping on throwing it all away to jump on a bandwagon they’ve failed to jump on twice before. Ubisoft and Activision are really depressing, they live up to this stupid cliche of the mega publisher only focused on low risk ventures while simultaneously evolving DRM techniques to absurdity.

There’s a “target video” over at Game Informer. That alone is enough for me to know I’m going nowhere near this, it presents such a horribly clichéd and adolescent way of dealing with challenging topics. I get that this is effectively a Clancy product so I probably shouldn’t have expected anything better but still, this is clearly designed to appeal to the sub-set of gamers that found “No Russian” edgy. Urgh!

Yea, the part where ‘the heroes’ machine gun a bridge full of innocent people then use a woman as a human shield was terrible. I’m still trying to figure out why Times Square was the target, as opposed to just driving the dude to his office at Goldmann Sachs.

wow i can’t believe people are excited about a game that looks like that. The video was almost a joke of how bad gaming has become. large cones pointing out the bad dudes and seeing through wallz! achiEvinemt unloked!11

“Terrorism has evolved” surely means that all the actual terrorists are dead and the only people left are the three or four idiots pissing about with a VCR in the Indus Valley.

I mean, never mind that real-life bogeymen Al Qaeda have been irrelevent for years: Who’d be a terrorist in Rainbow Six world? The last lot had more equipment and manpower than NATO and still got completely obliterated by five or six guys in a single helicopter. Just imagine that recruitment drive.

“Angry at the west/US government/unspecified entity because we don’t actually have a motive anyway? Looking for free training with a full range of military-grade small arms? Do you love using smoke grenades against people with thermal goggles? Is your name Marcello?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, why not sign up with our unnamed organisation? We specialise in mass occupations of entire cities, random, aimless explosions, and vague shows of apolitical defiance rooted almost entirely in our leader’s deep-seated daddy issues. Strike back at whoever happens to be bothering you this morning! Risk your life for someone else’s revenge, even though there’s nothing to actually avenge, because our leader is an idiot manchild!

Join now for free body armour and a SPAS-12, and your chances of surviving our first sortie may be as high as three percent!”

They are most likely going to portray “Occupy wall street” as a paramilitary organization where each person has access to body armor, assault weapons, riot shields, grenades and logistics and the movement will probably be supported by Ultranationalist Russians, China, North Korea, a set of random muslim nations and the drug barons of south america and its leader will be portrayed as a freedom-hating slaver-villain with emotional issues that wants to invest in social healthcare. That’s the level of plot I’m expecting after the garbage plot that was Vegas 2.

DIdn’t the last one involve a mass terrorist super army, lead by a disgruntled coworker who’s sole motivation was that he didn’t like you being promoted over him? What next? WWIII started by the office temp?

It was even more pathetic than that – he didn’t like you helping him. “wah wah, you never let me make my own mistakes, waah”. I mean, for fuck’s sake, just tell your dad how you feel, guy. There’s no need to start a frickin’ war.

Still, laughable plot aside, I do like the Vegas games, they’re some of my favourite shooters. Best cover mechanic ever. I hope they don’t try to get us to give a toss about their ridiculous plot this time, nor try to become identical to ever other shooter.

Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 is a great, great game that was unfortunately abandoned immediately after release.
The multiplayer has a great potential, but suffers from a few netcode and usability bugs, that would have been easy to remove and made the game a masterpiece. If only…

E.g. first you join a match, the whole map loads, and only then do you know if there is a free slot in the match.
If someone with a slow connection dies while shooting, the shooting sound loops infinitely for all players.

So I’m cautiously looking forward, but the track record for caring about the game post release is pretty bad.

The “looping gunfire” problem isn’t exclusive to the multiplayer – it happens sometimes in single player, too.

But yeah, support for Vegas 2 is atrocious. I tried playing through the campaign with some RPS folk a while back, and I spent so long trying to connect (it was very definitely not my pc or connection, and thorough searching revealed that others had the same problem for years and there’d been absolutely no response from Ubisoft) that by the time we’d finished the campaign, everyone else had three times as many XP as me. Attempts to co-op with another friend saw a less than 1/100 connection success rate. I wish I hadn’t bought it at all, they really didn’t deserve my money.